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Dog settled down in the back and watched the film, becoming excited only when there was an animal on the screen, and John managed to get his arm around Nancy during another scary bit. Once more her head rested lightly on his shoulder, and once more John kissed her lightly on the temple. Red Dog put his feet up on the back of the seats before him, and pushed his head in between them. ‘He’s jealous!’ laughed Nancy, and John told him to get back down and be quiet. A romantic scene was developing in the film, and John chose his moment to move in for that big kiss on Nancy’s lips, when a horrible stink rolled over them from the back of the car.
    ‘Strewth,’ exclaimed John, and Nancy opened the door and jumped out. ‘Red,’ said John, wearily, ‘you’re a real dag of a dog.’
    Red Dog looked pleased with himself, and John and Nancy never did get to have that kiss. It was one more romance that nearly happened. John used to say that as long as Red Dog was his companion, he probably wouldn’t be allowed to have a girlfriend.

RED DOG
AND THE POSH POOCHES
    One day Red Dog was lying under the workbench at Hamersley Iron Transport section, when he began to grow restless. There was not much going on, and he didn’t really feel like travelling around on the buses today. He had befriended one of the drivers of the enormous locomotives that took the iron ore from Mt. Tom Price to Dampier and had been all the way on it, back and forth several times. It took a very long while, but it was good to sit in the driver’s cabin and watch the landscape go by. In the evenings he saw wallabies and kangaroos, and he liked the look of the pools shaded by white gum trees in the places where creeks ran through.
    Today, though, Red Dog did not feel like spending several hours on a train, even if he could visit Paraburdoo afterwards by getting a lift with one of theminers. Today Red Dog had a feeling that something interesting was going on. He had an excellent instinct for knowing when something was about to happen, even turning up to supervise operations when somebody was moving into a new house, and then attending the house-warming party a couple of days later.
    Red Dog got onto one of the long yellow buses that was going into Dampier. There was somebody in his seat, so he growled until the man said, ‘OK, OK, Red, I get the message’ and ungrudgingly gave up his seat and moved to the back. At the junction with the main road Red Dog tugged at the sleeve of the driver, and kicked up a fuss until he stopped. He alighted there and went to wait for a car that he recognised.
    Shortly he detected the noise of Patsy’s engine. It had loose tappets and a small hole in the exhaust. As soon as it appeared he ran out in front of it, and Patsy skidded to a halt.
    ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said as she reached over to the passenger door to let him in. Red Dog leaped in and made strange motions with his head, which Patsy rightly interpreted as a request to open the window on his side. They drove off together, he with his head out of the window to catch the breeze, and she recovering her equanimity after such a sudden halt. ‘One day,’ she said to Red Dog, ‘you’re going to get munched by a car.’
    Red Dog made no kind of acknowledgement. He was used to being told off, and accepted it with thesame amused indifference that an elephant would display if complained to by a mouse. Patsy accepted that Red Dog had his own ideas, too. She had learned the hard way, because she had been the one who had tried to throw him out of the air-conditioned supermarket. Since then she had grown to like and respect him as much as everyone else, and always watched out for him in case he needed a lift. She had once taken him to the vet as well, but that’s another story.
    They drove past the glistening white salt beds of the Dampier Salt Company, and past the narrow gully of Seven Mile Creek. It seemed to Red Dog that he could smell just a hint of